Young & Beautiful
by Her Name Is Erika
Summary: Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful? / Or, Steffy being the maker of her own misery. LiamSteffy undertones.


**Young & Beautiful  
show:** The Bold & the Beautiful  
**central character:** Steffy Forrester Spencer  
**summary:** Will you still love me when I'm longer young and beautiful? / Or, Steffy being the maker of her own misery. LiamSteffy undertones.  
**notes:** This is my first B&B piece, and it will be a oneshot. Hopefully, this will not be my last.  
**notes2:**…and Jacqueline MacInnes Wood is one of my favourite actresses on this show, along with Kim Matula, so I will probably will write something about Hope soon if I feel like it. Besides, Jacqueline MacInnes Wood is a rock star with this miscarriage storyline. Just wanted to capture Steffy's thought processes with her accident & miscarriage.  
**notes3: **This is pro-Steam & they are my B&B OTP, but I will say that I like Hope AND Steffy. That, being said, I'm not writing for any fanwars or ship wars…whatever. I hate those with a passion. So, kindly keep that Lope vs. Leffy business to yourselves. I'd prefer feedback for the CONTENT rather than for pairing & COUPLE.  
**notes4: **Enjoy.  
**disclaimer:** No. I do this for pleasure and entertainment – not for profit.  
**musical inspiration:** "Young & Beautiful" – Lana Del Ray

* * *

The dictionary defines the word, execution as the _infliction of capital punishment_.

Capital punishment Steffy knows is just another phrase for another word that is as final as it sounds – just one syllable that punches and cuts like a knife.

Capital punishment is just death. It's just death.

.

Her memories are scattered and it feels as though Steffy falls underwater and her lungs burn for air.

It feels like when she decides to let herself drown in the bathtub underneath the crushing weight of Bill's rejection. Just like the first, real time they meet, her memories slowly fall and settle into place. They slowly click together and suddenly, she's coming up, breaking the watery surface and filling her lungs with much needed oxygen. She sees Liam's face and knows in her head and in her heart, Steffy wants him here.

"Liam," she rasps, trying to focus on his face. The medicine makes her want to sleep but she will not. Her head taps a pounding rhythm around her temples in tandem with her beating heart. The machines tell her she's alive, even though her body feels weighed down and it aches to move, "you're here."

"Yeah," Liam smiles, wryly, running a hand through her hair. "You're my wife. Where else would I be?"

"Your wife?"

"Yeah."

Wife. The word rolls around her in her thoughts, and Steffy sees black lace. She sees black lace in her mind's eye, and remembers how sunny it is that day as she exchanges vows with Liam again, the words and the way he looks at her as she verbalizes the words in her heart. Hope is not a factor. This wedding has no manipulation involved. This, all of this, is for real.

She's not on top of a mountain in Aspen, but at the Forrester estate in front of their family and friends.

Steffy glances down and brings a weak hand to her line of vision to see a ring with a black diamond on her left ring finger. She puts her hand down, and sighs. She's married to Liam.

(The word, _wife_, feels right in Steffy's head because she remembers their wedding more vividly than anything else right now.)

.

Her name is Steffy Forrester Spencer.

She's named after her grandmother, Stephanie Forrester, dead from Stage IV lung cancer.

The president of the United States of America is Barack Obama.

The year is twenty thirteen.

She is in Los Angeles right now when she daydreams of Aspen.

.

People tell Steffy she's strong all the time and that she can do anything she sets her mind to.

They call her stubborn, passionate and tells her that not even stars in the sky can stop her. It reminds her of the glow-in-the-dark star stickers, Phoebe begs their parents to get from their room. The stars glow bright green when the lights are closed and Steffy wants to play pretend – she wants to be an astronaut when she stop being five and becomes a grown-up.

Steffy remembers Phoebe's long curly blonde hair, and green eyes wide with worry that she'll fall off the bed and hurt herself.

Steffy merely laughs at Phoebe's worry and jumps on the bed anyway. She'll touch the stars.

Soon, they hold hands and try to touch the bright green, glow-in-the-dark stars together while Taylor, Ridge, and Thomas sleep.

.

Her grandmother – her namesake is one of the strongest people Steffy knows.

Her twin, her literal soul sister Phoebe, has a beauty and quiet inner strength that Steffy secretly envies and admires all at once.

Then again: her grandmother is dead, and so is her sister and Steffy feels empty, in spite of it being a beautiful, surfing kind of day in Los Angeles and people move on with their lives.

.

Steffy, though it's an uncommon piece of knowledge, is a fighter.

She fights to get what she wants, fights for the ones she loves the most, and fights hardest when there are obstacles in the way.

Right now, Steffy is in the hospital fighting between drifting asleep and staying awake. Dr. Meade says concussion patients have their memories scattered and it may be a little harder to get those back. She sighs quietly. The machines constantly beep. She feels the slight shift of the IV needle in her hand and it's still all too foggy.

The door opens and Liam walks in, slowly, and greets her, "Hey."

"Hi."

"I don't know if you remember this," Liam starts, slowly, his eyes have optimism – she's gonna be okay, and Steffy will look fine in a bikini. It's just a joke. She's kidding. However, Liam's eyes are sad behind the optimism and that boyish smile – just one of the aspects of Liam, Steffy loves. Why she's seeing that sadness too, she doesn't know. "But we made plans after you left your brother's. We were gonna have a barbecue at home," he still explains, as Steffy looks into his eyes, and is trying to clear the mentally fog, the kind of fog that is thick enough to block out the Los Angeles sun that always seems to be around otherwise.

"Okay."

Liam continues and she feels safe with the feeling of his hand in hers, the softness of his palm against hers acting as the only thing that makes sense when it's still confusing and aches to move.

"There was so much traffic at PCH so you decided to take the bike instead of your car," Liam finishes, and asks her a question she's reaching and mentally stretching to reach and make sense of. "Do you know why I asked you not to take the bike?"

That mental fog starts to clear in fragments, little slivers of recognition like little rays of sunshine.

(It's the hardest fight of her life.)

.

Like a disjointed movie that suddenly starts to play in the right order, she starts to remember.

Steffy remembers the picture of the sonogram and how her baby's heart is but a little, speeding flicker, her developing baby bump, and the ghost of her child's hand or foot presses against her abdomen so hard Steffy feels it against her palm. It makes her heart skip a beat like falling in love with this little person that is part her and part Liam, and created with love no matter what anyone wants to believe.

And then she hears Liam's voice, loud & clear somewhere in her head, _"I'm serious. No bike until after the baby is born. I'm laying down the law, woman." _

She remembers. She remembers, now, and it hurts even more to do that than forget.

.

"Because," Steffy answers, with the sound of wheels scraping against asphalt the loudest in her head, "I'm – pregnant."

Liam gazes at her and the optimism in his eyes disappear and it makes her body run cold.

The mental fog clears and there is no sunshine, just darkened clouds and a torrential downpour. Her throat closes like these hospital walls move in slowly and will crush her. The pain isn't focuses on her abdomen. It's in her chest now and Steffy now knows what heartbreak literally feels like. Experience and actually feeling are polar opposites.

"But now," Steffy pauses, flashing to that moment in her accident over and over, "I'm…not."

She breaks and sobs down in Liam's arms.

(Here's what Steffy Forrester Spencer learns that day as the gravity of the situation hits her harder than the accident that causes her miscarriage: she still hears that she's strong, and tough, but even the _very strong_ shatter.)

.

Alone in that hospital room, Steffy thinks about the name combinations she and Liam want to bestow on their child, now it's still their baby but one that will never the light of the day.

People always tell her she's selfish and impulsive too, so there's that.

Karma finally swings back around and gives Steffy what she deserves.

.

For a girl, the name Aspen is different and unique and completely them. Liam smiles, and agrees with a kiss because it's so perfect. Everything is actually.

Aspen is their place, the place she falls for him, _regardless_ of Hope – not because of her.

Steffy's Shakespeare favourite play is _The Tempest_, and the name Miranda sticks with her.

And then there's the memory of her sister, Phoebe.

Steffy just wants to opportunity to be the type of mother that hers is to her, and to run a hairbrush through her daughter's locks with a certain maternal warmth the same way Taylor does with her.

Aspen Miranda (read: or, Phoebe) Spencer is the name she thinks to name their daughter; a tree-climbing daughter that Steffy pictures with Liam's smile, her eyes, dark brown mud stains on her cheeks and grass stains on her clothes.

Liam will definitely teach their little girl how to cha-cha by letting her stand on his feet.

.

If she and Liam have a son, Bill will probably fight them on yet another variation of William and work on his first baby gift having something with a sword motif.

It's common and simple but it's a name that crosses her mind, more than once.

She's been partial to the common name, Matthew – no shortening to Matt – just _Matthew_.

Matthew William Thomas (because Thomas will make the best uncle in the _world_) Spencer for their little boy that will learn to surf and loves motorcycles, Steffy ponders as a tear rolls down her cheek, breaks off at her chin and disappears into the starchy material of her hospital gown.

.

There is a scream building inside that is guttural, loud and will soon be ripped out of her.

She will soon be angry enough to throw things in a storm of rage, anger, despair, blame and guilt because Liam's heart is broken, too and it's all her fault.

There will be a day where she will break down at the softness of an unused baby blanket she runs between her fingers, while indulging in a fantasy that will never reality.

But that today is not that day.

.

Today, Steffy just sees that bike, and the moments before everything goes black more vividly and engrained in the threads of her memories and will never go away. She sees the moment her child's death happens at her own hand.

(Here's something Steffy can live with for today, this minute: she's the maker of her own misery.)

* * *

**A/N: It's my first B&B. Thoughts? **

**(Be gentle…) **

**-Erika**


End file.
